


The Tourney at Ashemark

by LadyRhiyana



Series: The tale of Squire!Brienne [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gen, Jaime Lannister's moral philosophy, Life Lessons, Road Trips, Tournaments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 18:06:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: “Well,” he says, “where shall we go? There’s a tourney in Ashemark in a month, and I haven’t been back to the Rock in a few years. South, to the Reach? Or perhaps even Dorne? What do you think?”“I’ve never been to a real tourney before,” she says.“Very well,” he says, “Ashemark it is.”**Jaime's too-clever tongue and Brienne's constant brawling see them temporarily thrown out of King's Landing. The sun is shining and the roads are good, and so they head towards the Westerlands for a tournament.





	1. Jaime

**Author's Note:**

> And so we're back for more adventures of Squire!Brienne, and the dubious life lessons she learns in Jaime's service. Thank you to all who provided kudos and feedback on the first instalment - this continuation is for you.

There is another brawling fight in the practice yard. The shouts and cheers and the cries of “A beauty! A beauty!” are loud enough to disturb Robert at his drinking.

“By all the gods!” he exclaims. “Is that damn wench of yours fighting again, Kingslayer? I thought that business was finished.”

Jaime only shrugs. “Let them sort it out amongst themselves, your Grace.”

Robert snorts. “It’s been almost a week now. Time enough for the wench to get over her grudge. If this goes on any longer it’ll lead to bad blood.”

** 

Afterwards, Brienne’s lip is swollen, and her knuckles are split and bleeding. She looks sullen and unrepentant, and stares at him with dour, unapologetic stubbornness. 

“I’m not sorry,” she says fiercely.

She reminds him of Tyrion.

“No,” he sighs. “I don’t suppose you are.” He could tell her that holding onto this grudge would win her no friends, that squiring – at least for the sons of knights and lords – was often as much about leadership and forming connections with other highborn boys as it was learning to fight. 

But whatever else he is, Jaime is not a hypocrite. 

** 

A month later, things boil over. 

It’s not wholly Brienne’s fault. Jaime’s own too-clever tongue plays its part, his temper vicious after a quarrel with Cersei; there is also some unpleasantness over a duel with a jumped-up lordling from the Reach. 

Robert’s casual good nature finally gives way to blustering temper, and he orders Jaime to take his quarrelsome wench and leave King’s Landing. Cersei rages and coaxes, but Robert remains adamant: “Go chase after dragons and unicorns and white bloody harts for all I care,” he roars. “I don’t want to see your damned smug face for at least six months.”

If anything, Jaime is bored and restless and glad of the opportunity to escape. If he’d truly wanted to stay he could have made the effort to cajole Cersei into sweet forgiveness and waited for her to wear Robert down, but the thought of riding out, away, anywhere so long as it is far from the Red Keep is too enticing. 

There are six other knights of the Kingsguard. Robert will not be in danger. 

And so, just before dawn, they ride out of the city. Two mailed, red-cloaked travellers are accorded no more than a curious glance, even Jaime’s Lannister-gold hair drawing only cursory attention. The Lannisters are a numerous and sprawling family, and from a distance and without his white cloak there is nothing to indicate that he is anything more than just another golden-haired cousin. 

** 

Once they pass through the gates, Jaime reins his palfrey in and turns to look at Brienne. “Well,” he says, “where shall we go?”

She stares at him, uncomprehending. 

“West?” he asks. “There’s a tourney in Ashemark in a month, and I haven’t been back to the Rock in a few years. South, to the Reach? Or perhaps even Dorne? What do you think?” 

She smiles, slow, shy and wary, though she winces when it stretches a still healing cut on her lip. “I’ve never been to a real tourney before,” she says.

“Very well,” he says, “Ashemark it is.” 

They set out along the Goldroad. Jaime is in good spirits: the sun is shining, he has a good horse beneath him, his white cloak is tucked away out of sight in his saddlebags and King’s Landing is at his back. He hums a little under his breath, an old marching song, and soon finds that he is smiling.


	2. Brienne

By the time the sun is high in the sky, they are well on their way. The Goldroad is well maintained and relatively safe; in this warm weather there are travellers by the score on their way to and from King’s Landing. Colourful merchants carrying goods of all sorts; farmers dressed in their market-day best with wagons piled high with produce; knights and squires and men-at-arms in mail and leather and brightly coloured surcoats; craftsmen with their tools; vagabonds and wandering singers and even a troupe of travelling mummers. 

As the days pass, Ser Jaime stops shaving every morning and lets his hair and beard grow out. Without his pure white cloak, with his jaw dotted with stubble and his skin tanned by the warm sun, he looks less like a perfect story-book knight and more like a flesh and blood man.

Sometimes other travellers invite them to share their fire and their meals. One night they eat with an itinerant septon, another with two ragged hedge knights on their way to fight in some minor local conflict. For three glorious nights they fall in with the troupe of travelling mummers, and Brienne watches their performances in tiny village greens with rapturous interest. 

Sometimes by the campfire the others will tell stories while they pass the wineskin around, or someone will sing a song. Ser Jaime warns her not to drink too deeply and tells her to sleep with one eye open and her hand on her sword. 

The fellowship of the road is all well and good, he says, but I have no wish to be murdered in my sleep. 

**

Three weeks after they leave King’s Landing, they reach the great cliffs at Casterly Rock, rearing more than a hundred feet above the seething waters below. The sky is streaked with rose-pink and gold, the restless waves very different to the calm sapphire waters surrounding Tarth. As the sun sinks beneath the horizon, a cool breeze makes her shiver; Brienne pulls her cloak tighter about her, glad for the thick red wool.

The looming presence of the Rock is impossible to ignore. The impossibly vast fortress, built into the very highest cliff, dominates the entire landscape; if she squints she can make out the lion banners flying from the highest ramparts. But Ser Jaime’s focus is deliberately turned away; he dismounts and walks over to look down at the churning sea far below. 

Whatever his thoughts, he does not choose to share them with her.

They watch the long, slow sunset in companionable silence, until the sound of hoofbeats and the jingling of bit and bridle alert them to riders behind them. Ser Jaime remains staring out to sea, but Brienne turns to see a trio of Lannister guardsmen rein up at a discreet distance. 

“Ser Jaime,” the leader says. “Lord Tywin sends his greetings and bids you dine in the great hall this evening.” 

Ser Jaime sighs and turns away from the waves. “Very well, captain,” he says, re-mounting his horse and turning it towards the Rock. “Let us go in.”

As the sun finally vanishes into the sea and the first stars appear in the sky, the great doors swing open at their approach and Casterly Rock swallows them whole. 

**

There is time to wash and change their clothes before making their appearance at evening meal in the great hall. 

Lord Tywin Lannister is tall and golden as his son, but he is – severe, his hooded green eyes humourless, pitiless and calculating. Brienne feels a chill as they flick over her, and she huddles in the corner with the other squires, hunching her shoulders and lowering her eyes. 

“Well, ser, and what are you doing here?” Lord Tywin asks. His mouth tightens as he notes Ser Jaime’s white tunic, which he had chosen over the lion-embroidered crimson laid out in readiness for him.

“We’re going to Ashemark, Father,” Ser Jaime says easily. He does not mention the reason for the impromptu journey; no doubt Lord Tywin is already aware of the King’s edict.

“We?” Once more, Lord Tywin’s eyes find Brienne, a brief, measuring, dismissive glance. “Your ‘squire’. Yes, I’ve heard of her. An ugly freak.”

Ser Jaime pours himself a goblet of wine. He always insists that she is never to pour for him; Lancel does nothing but pour wine for the king, he says, and now he is fit for nothing else. 

“That freak is better than any of them, Father,” he says, his voice level.

“But still a woman. She’ll never be a knight, and if by some chance some fool does knight her, she’ll be no better than a laughingstock.” Lord Tywin makes a disgusted sound. 

Brienne bites her lip, swallows around a painful obstruction in her throat.

Ser Jaime’s easy smile dies. “When I knight her, Father,” he says, “it will be because she has earned it, and for no other reason. And then no one will be able to deny her.”

**

By the time they return to Ser Jaime’s assigned chamber, he is four or five cups in. He never truly drinks much, she knows, not for the sake of it. But that night, after Lord Tywin’s scorn and the barely veiled speculation of the bannermen and guests, Ser Jaime deliberately sets out to drink himself into oblivion and invites Brienne to join him.

Later, much later, as the fire dies down and the silence of the early hours surrounds them, he turns his focus on her. 

“No man could deny that I earned my knighthood,” he says. “I rode with Ser Arthur Dayne against the Kingswood brotherhood; I fought and killed and was knighted on the field of battle.” His eyes burn bright, even clouded as they are by drink. “But when Aerys elevated me to the Kingsguard – that, that is all people remember. A green boy of fifteen, given a white cloak for no other reason than to spite his father.”

In the silence of the night, the crackling of the fire seems startlingly loud. The golden firelight dances over his face, and she sees that his mouth is unsmiling, even grim. Sometimes – only ever in safety and solitude – he will drop all his masks and defences and pose her unanswerable questions.

“That’s all they remember,” he says again. “That I was too young. That I never deserved it. That I broke my vows and threw away my honour like it was worth nothing –” 

He looks at her, fierce and angry and searching. 

“Why did you do it?” she asks, caught up in that fierce regard. “If you weren’t too young, if your honour was truly of worth to you – why?”

But he turns away, and she knows that his confidences are at an end.

***

The next day they head out on the road north towards Ashemark. Ser Jaime is irritable, hungover and foul-tempered, and Brienne can still feel the sting of Lord Tywin’s scornful remarks – words are wind, she thinks fiercely, but the thought brings small comfort. 

But as the sun climbs higher in the sky and they increase their distance from his father, Ser Jaime’s tension slowly fades and he regains his smiling humour. The road to Ashemark – though not as heavily travelled as the Goldroad – is filled with travellers heading to the tourney; here in the Westerlands, in the shadow of the Rock, it’s harder for Ser Jaime to pass unnoticed and many of the travellers recognize him as they pass.

But unlike the wariness and distrust of the people of King’s Landing and the Crownlands, here they embrace him as their own – their young Lion of the Rock, not the Kingslayer. 

He was fostered with the sons of the western lords; before he was knighted he must have have fought in minor tourneys and ridden out with his companions to all the towns and villages of the Westerlands. 

She wonders if he feels for these lands what she feels for Tarth – and for the first time she wonders why he gave it all up for a white cloak that has never made him happy.


	3. Jaime

The whole of the Westerlands, it seems, has turned out for the tourney at Ashemark. Jaime sees the flags of houses Lefford and Marbrand and Brax, the purple of house Plumm and the russet and green of house Moreland; he sees Crakehall and Clegane and Banefort. Among the flags of the bannermen and great houses there are other, lesser-known sigils: household and hedge knights come to try their luck. 

The gold lion on crimson flies from a luxurious tent set in pride of place on the green, and for lack of a better plan Jaime makes his way towards it. Cries of recognition and welcome come from all around; Jaime is one of the great tourney knights of Westeros, and well known by all on the circuit. But his presence here in only mail and a red cloak, without his retinue and with only one squire is no doubt causing some comment.

They would have heard of Robert’s edict by now. 

No matter. Let them think what they will. 

As he had thought, the Lannister tent is inhabited by his cousin Daven, and by three or four of his many cousins on his father’s side. “Cuz!” Daven says, enveloping him in a bear hug and welcoming him warmly into their company. “We heard you had been spotted on the road. Have you come to compete? Damn me, but I was thinking I might be in with a chance this time.”

“Not I, cousin,” Jaime replies, clapping him warmly on the shoulder and settling into a folding chair with a sigh. “I am a spectator only this time. It’s Brienne here who wants to try her luck.” He indicates Brienne with a negligent tip of his head; five sets of green Lannister eyes focus on her, and she looks wildly at him, her eyes wide and blinking. 

“I was thinking the melee,” he says.

Daven roars with laughter. “Gods, but we’ve all heard of your strapping wench of a squire, but I didn’t believe it, not until now.” He looks her up and down, measuring her height, her brawn and her strength. “Do you know, cuz, I think you may be right. Put her in armour, she’ll be as tall and strong as any man. How good is she?” 

“As good as any one of you,” Jaime answers, without hesitation, and then grins. “Not as good as me.” 

“Ha!” one of his interchangeable cousins scoffs. “Are you willing to place a wager on that, cousin Jaime?” 

“Whatever you like, cuz,” Jaime says.

** 

“Ser Jaime, please,” Brienne hisses, later that day as they venture out in search of the master of the lists to register for the tourney. “You can’t possibly think –”

“I can, and I do,” he says, slipping through the crowd and towing her inexorably in his wake. If she weren’t so dazed and off-balance, she’d probably dig her heels in and refuse to move; he was taking all the advantage he could of her confusion. 

“But –” she dodges around a crowd of smallfolk watching a puppet show, “but how will I even enter? The moment they see that I’m a woman –”

“Easily taken care of, I assure you.” A few gold dragons in the right official’s palm would take care of everything. 

Two young urchin boys dart out into their way, flailing at each other with wooden swords. One crashes into Jaime’s legs, looks up to see his crimson cloak and the gold lions on his surcoat, and his eyes go wide and awed. “Ser Jaime!” he breathes out, nudging at his friend. “Look, Hugh!” 

Jaime spends a couple of moments answering the boys’ wide-eyed questions before sending them on their way. 

“But I don’t even have any armour!” Brienne says afterwards, picking up the threads of their argument. 

Jaime considers this. She does have a point. 

“After you’ve been entered,” he says. “I’ll buy you some.”

**

Jaime knows all the best armourers on the circuit. 

Vorghan Mott, younger brother of the excellent Tobho Mott, welcomes him into his stall with wide gestures and ingratiating smiles. His face falls a little when Jaime tells him that it’s Brienne who is looking for armour, but when he gets a good look at her professional interest takes over. 

“Well, well,” Mott says, “I do have something that might fit you – if you don’t mind, let me take your measurements, lady –” Startled, Brienne’s eyes fly to Jaime’s as Mott unceremoniously shifts her arms out and pulls out a tape measure. 

“If I may ask, lady, is price a question…?” Mott asks delicately as he scribbles down some measurements on a slate. 

Brienne’s eyes go even wider. Jaime can see the fears and objections and practical considerations crowding her tongue. 

“Price is no question,” Jaime says before she can speak. “Send the bills to my father.”

Mott only bows. “Of course, Ser Jaime,” he says, “of course.”

** 

She has the temerity to say that she will pay him back for the armour one day. 

He grabs her by the arm and steers her into a backwater out of the way of the crowd. “Listen, Brienne,” he says, shaking her a little to get her to forget her stubborn objections and denials. She’s almost eye to eye with him; he makes sure that she’s focusing on him before he continues. “Don’t tell me this isn’t something you’ve always wanted. Not the glory or the cheering, but the chance to test yourself against all of these knights and squires as an equal.” 

“But when they see that I’m a woman –”

He overrides her. “What does it matter that you’re a woman? What does it matter if they laugh and sneer behind your back? You know who you are and what you’re worth. You had the courage to come to King’s Landing to be a squire; you stepped back into the practice yard with them even after you knew about their bloody bet; if you know what you want, then reach out and take it.”

She stares at him. He laughs, a low, ugly laugh. “Just promise me this, Brienne. Don’t ever apologise.”

**

The next day, he and Daven and the interchangeable cousins and some other of his father’s bannermen laze at their ease in the viewing stands with Lord and Lady Ashemark. It’s a bright, pleasant day, and the assembled crowds cheer and roar at every battering blow dealt and received. The melee – essentially a huge mock-battle against all comers, until only one man is left standing – is not as elite and thrilling as the pounding hooves and splintered lances of the jousting, but the crowds always love a rousing battle. 

Jaime takes great pleasure in watching the mystery blue knight take on all comers, outwitting some opponents and battering others down with brute strength. He grins fiercely as he sees her employ some of the tricks he had taught her, and laughs outright when she finally wins all by throwing herself at her last opponent and tackling him into the mud. 

When she bows before Lord and Lady Ashemark to receive her prize and takes off her helmet, Jaime listens carefully to the crowd: there are a few murmurs and hissing shouts, but overriding all that is the drunken, good-natured cheering of a crowd who have been well-entertained. 

Most likely they don’t even realize that she was a woman. 

But what does that matter? 

She had won. 

He collects his winnings from his cousin and goes back to the Lannister tent to wait for her return. Any other squire or knight who had just won a great purse would spend the rest of the tourney drinking and whoring and flaunting his proud manhood. 

But not Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head-canon for this verse, Brienne has no idea what to do with her winnings and so Jaime gets Lord Tywin to invest them for her at very high interest. Because why not.


End file.
